Manta 2010

5/18/2011: Manta isn't dead! There are some pretty nice UI changes in place, more on the way, and new content. I should note that its regular price has been $0.99 for some time.

9/22/2010: Manta 1.0.1 released to the App Store. Please check it out. Note that I'm putting off work on Manta 1.1 while I wait for some nasty bugs in Unity 3 to get sorted out. Unity 3 should let Manta run at native resolution on the iPhone 4, among other things. It also has a bunch of shaders specifically optimized for mobile devices, which should further improve performance.

9/17/2010: Manta is free until tomorrow. After that its "regular" price has been cut to $1.99.

9/13/2010: Manta 1.0.1 submitted for approval. With luck, it should be in the App Store in about a week. Changes in 1.0.1 include:

Welcome to the Manta 2010 homepage. (Apparently there was already an app called "Manta". Sigh. Note that mantaapp.com points here though.)

Manta 1.0 is on sale in the App Store now (a nice way to start the week). It's on sale for $0.99 (regular price is $2.99) until September 13th.

(As an aside: if you're wondering why I'm not using the official "available in the App Store" graphic, it's because I haven't jumped through all the necessary legal hoops to do so. Yes, I know this doesn't stop most App developers, but I'm a compulsive rules follower... so any week now.)

Screenshot from the iPad version

The Story So Far

Manta was originally developed as an entry for the 2008 Unity Awards. It didn't win any prizes, but it received special mention in three categories: Action Game, Vehicle/Racing Game, and iPhone potential. (Manta was always intended to be an iPhone game, but at the time Unity iPhone was announced but unreleased.)

Manta started out as a "homage" (i.e. shameless ripoff) of the classic game Carrier Command with the idea of taking the flight sim gameplay from Carrier Command and creating a 3d shooter equivalent to the great 2d arcade shooters Xevious and Time Pilot '84. (As David Byrne once said of Psycho Killer, he set off to do something like Alice Cooper and ended up doing something else.)

It's taken two years (mostly because life happens) but it's finally been ported to iOS.

Incidentally, if you're interested in checking out the version that was entered in the competition, it's still online here. Yeah it would be great to do procedural reflective water on the iPhone...